The Corpse on the Dike (17 page)

“I’m glad to see you are happy,” young Cardozo said, “but the chief inspector would be grateful if you could be happy quietly for a while.”

“Sure,” Grijpstra said and got up. “Thanks, de Gier—a most extraordinary sound.”

“What does it remind you of?” de Gier asked.

“What, the sound?”

“The sound.”

“Of a dream,” Grijpstra said after a while, “but a dream I couldn’t remember when I woke up. I remembered I had a dream—a very important dream—but every time I tried to remember a detail it slipped away. Slowly, but quick enough to be beyond reach. You know it is there but you can’t touch it.”

Cardozo was still in the room. De Gier turned toward the young constable-detective and smiled. Cardozo looked sweet, with his long hair and corduroy suit and large deerlike eyes.

“Go on,” Cardozo said; “never mind the chief inspector. If you play a little softer he can’t hear. I’m sorry I interrupted you. What’s that new instrument?”

“Don’t know,” de Gier said. “I found it secondhand in a music shop. The man said he bought it from a bankrupt pop group.”

“Expensive?” Grijpstra asked.

“Fairly.”

“Good,” Grijpstra said. “It’s worth it.”

“I paid,” de Gier said.

“Of course.” Grijpstra glared at Cardozo. “Have you got nothing to do, Cardozo?”

“No, but I would like to do something.”

“That’s the proper attitude,” de Gier said. “Get some coffee then. You are the youngest member of the murder squad, so you can get the coffee, and pay for it too.”

“Certainly,” Cardozo said. “Right away.”

He came back with the coffee and Grijpstra sipped and looked at the two younger men.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “we aren’t doing very well.”

“No?” de Gier asked.

“No, and I’ll tell you why. First of all we have the Cat,” Grijpstra said, “or, rather, we don’t have him. He is still in our hands but we’ll have to let him go tomorrow unless we can explain ourselves better. The public prosecutor won’t let us hold him on that half-shaved mustache. We can’t really prove he was on the run when we caught him and he has been very calm and self-possessed ever since we arrested him.”

“You’ve got nothing else on him?” Cardozo asked.

Grijpstra, who was about to plunge into a long sentence, interrupted himself and looked at the young man.

“Are you on this case now, Cardozo?”

“I was on the young girl’s death,” Cardozo said. “The girl they found in the park. But everybody seems to think she gave herself an overdose and the case is closed now.”

“What do
you
think?” de Gier asked.

“I don’t think much.”

“So you have nothing to do, have you?” Grijpstra asked. “Have you been detailed to us?”

“The commissaris mentioned I might come see you.”

“All right, all right,” Grijpstra said fiercely.

“We’ll take you,” de Gier said, “as long as you promise not to be in the way, and to do as you are told, and not to speak unless spoken to and…”

“I promise,” Cardozo said.

“Right,” Grijpstra said. “You asked a question just now. Here is the answer. We have nothing else on the Cat. A half mustache and a lot of thoughts, our thoughts. And the Mouse. You know about the Mouse?”

“I read the report,” Cardozo said. “The commissaris let me look through his file. I have just come from his office. And the chief inspector stopped me in the corridor and asked me to ask you to make less noise.”

“We aren’t making any noise,” Grijpstra said. “We checked the Cat’s warehouse and it is full of all sorts of goods. We checked through his books and he bought the goods all right. He is allowed to buy goods for resale since he is a merchant and owns a registered business. There are no TV sets in his warehouse, no washing machines, no paints, no building materials, nothing the Mouse mentioned. The Cat is still in the clear.”

“Another warehouse,” Cardozo suggested.

“Maybe, but where? Perhaps he stored the goods in the houses of the thieves. We found plenty on the dike, enough to keep all the other suspects in custody even if they weren’t caught with firearms in their hands.”

“Right,” de Gier said, “that’s bad. But we’ll go into it today. What else is bad?”

“The man the motorcycle-sergeant shot; he is dying, I believe. He was operated on and the wound seemed all right but he is much worse now. That’s bad for all of us. We aren’t supposed to kill people; we’re supposed to protect them against themselves.”

“Hell,” Cardozo said, “they were shooting at us with a tommy gun, weren’t they? And that sergeant was tired. He had been up all night. I know him; he is a careful man. I am sure he aimed for the fellow’s legs.”

“OK,” de Gier said, “that’s bad too. What else?”

“Wernekink,” Grijpstra shouted and jumped up. “He is dead, and he goes on being dead and nobody knows who did it except the killer.”

De Gier sighed.

“And the case is geting old.”

Cardozo was listening and nodding his head at the same time.

“Stop nodding,” Grijpstra said. “You look silly when you nod. And you irritate me. We are supposed to work together, not irritate each other.”

“He bought the coffee, didn’t he?” de Gier asked.

“Sure, sure. But he shouldn’t nod. You don’t want him to nod either, do you?”

“Stop nodding, Cardozo,” de Gier said.

Cardozo got up. He looked very pleasant and obedient. “I’ll go do some work. What would you like me to do, adjutant?”

Grijpstra said nothing. “Find that second warehouse,” de Gier said. “The Mouse never mentioned another warehouse but it’s got to be somewhere. They were hijacking container-loads of goods, too much to store in those small houses on the dike.”

“No,” Grijpstra said, “I don’t agree. And I don’t want Cardozo to run about all day for nothing. I think they
did
store the goods on the dike. The Cat is intelligent, he wouldn’t risk too much carting about. I think they took their goods to the dike in the early morning, stored them in and under their houses—they all have cellars and we did find goods in the cellars—and then took it straight to the addresses the Cat gave them. They had a small truck and they also had the cruiser on the river. I think the Cat only has one warehouse—the one he showed us—and there was nothing there.”

“You talked to the Cat before he was arrested, didn’t you?” Cardozo asked de Gier.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“It is in my report,” de Gier said. “You read it.”

“Sharif Electric,” Grijpstra shouted and jumped up. “Clever Cardozo! Brilliant Cardozo! Excellent Cardozo!”

“Darling Cardozo,” de Gier said.

Cardozo smiled.

“Electric,” Grijpstra shouted, “Sharif Electric. And they were stealing electric household appliances. Who is Sharif?”

“I know,” de Gier said.

“Tell us!”

“Sharif is the owner of a chain of discount stores. He sells electric household appliances. You have to pay cash but his prices are very low. He also sells camping goods and boats.”

Grijpstra was listening intently.

“Don’t know him personally,” he said slowly. “I know his name now; I think I bought a sleeping bag in one of his stores once. For my son. Birthday present. A store near the central station, is that right?”

“Yes,” de Gier said, “that’s his main store, but he has others in the city and some in Rotterdam and The Hague and in the country too, I believe.”

“Sharif, what sort of a name is that?”

“Arab,” Cardozo said. “I know his full name. Mehemed el Sharif. He is rich and he owns a beautiful villa in New South with a garden on the river. I’ve been there once.”

“Why? Do we have anything on him?”

“No. The place was burglarized while Sharif and his family were away. The thieves escaped with carpets and silverware and some other valuables but they couldn’t break the safe. I saw Sharif when he came back from his trip. He wasn’t very upset; everything was insured. He was worried about his cat, I remember. He had left the cat in the house and the neighbors were supposed to feed it. They had a key. He thought that the burglars might have frightened the cat away. But the cat came back again.”

“Good,” de Gier said.

“Did we catch the thieves?”

“Yes, adjutant. Later. They were caught while they were breaking into another house and they confessed to a string of burglaries. We found some of the goods too and they were returned to Sharif.”

“Neighbors had nothing to do with it?”

“No.”

“What was he like, this Sharif fellow?”

“A tall handsome man with a beard. He wore an Arab dress—a burnoose, I think they call it—when I went to see him at his house.”

“Nice fellow?”

“I think so. Soft-spoken and quiet. He gave me some strong coffee in a small cup and I sat on the floor. An exciting house too, beautifully furnished. Carpets everywhere. He had to pray in the middle of our conversation. They have set times for prayer, you know. Got himself a small carpet and started bowing down and getting up and mumbling to himself. Beautiful!”

“That’s nice,” de Gier said.

“Wife? Family?” Grijpstra asked.

“An Arab wife who doesn’t speak Dutch and two children, small children.”

“Does Sharif speak Dutch?”

“Fluently.”

“How long has he been here?”

“I asked him. He came after the war. First guest laborer into the country he said. Made a joke about it. He said he really came as a guest, not as a laborer. Said he didn’t like to work.”

Grijpstra turned to de Gier. “Didn’t you say in your report that the Cat was buying used carpet tiles from him and had bought them because Sharif had no further use for them? They’d been used at an exhibition or something?”

“Yes. I found the carpet tiles in the Cat’s warehouse. He meant to sell them to the street market at double the price he paid. It was a big deal, he said, close to six thousand guilders.”

Grijpstra had picked up the phone and was dialing the commissaris’ number. The conversation didn’t take long. “He is coming down,” Grijpstra said. “Good work, Cardozo. We need a fresh brain. De Gier is getting fat and I am getting old; we can’t see what is staring us in the face.”

De Gier jumped up. “Fat?”

“I am fatter maybe,” Grijpstra said, “but the fat is all over me. Nicely divided. But you have it all in one place. There.” He poked de Gier in the stomach.

“I can’t see it,” Cardozo said.

“Breathe out, de Gier,” Grijpstra said. “You see? There it is. A lump. A sort of ball. It’s the fried noodles and all that other starch he eats. Should eat apples and do some judo practice.”

De Gier was getting red in the face. “I practice twice…”

“Gentlemen,” the commissaris said.

The conversation took well over an hour but they finally agreed. They wouldn’t be able to find the connection with the Cat and most of his helpers in jail, but they might find something if they worked from Sharif’s side.

“If he received the goods,” the commissaris said, “he must have paid with black money. There can’t be any invoices in his bookkeeping. But the appliances must be in his shops, so that’s where we should look. It may explain Sharif Electric’s low prices. Suppose he has a hundred TV sets, fifty are bought officially at the right price and fifty come from the Cat at half-price. His average buying price is seventy-five percent of normal value. He adds a profit of fifty or sixty percent—whatever he can ask in his trade—and he makes more money than his competitors while he is selling at approximately twenty-five percent below their prices.”

De Gier, whose comprehension of abstract figures was low, had closed his eyes.

“You follow, de Gier?”

De Gier opened his eyes. “Yes, sir. Who is going to check the records of his stores? Sharif probably keeps his stock records and invoices at his central office, the warehouse where I met the Cat for the first time. Somebody ought to go there while others are checking the shops.”

“Not you three,” the commissaris said. “We have specialists. I’ll go talk to their chief now and see if they can start right away. We may be too late as it is. Sharif knows what is going on as well as we do and he may have ordered his employees to take the stolen appliances out.”

“We should be able to catch him,” Grijpstra said. “He has a number of shops and to shift all that stuff around would be an effort involving a lot of people. One of them will talk, especially when it is suggested to them that they may be in trouble themselves if they pretend to know nothing.

“What do
we
do, sir?” de Gier asked.

“Grijpstra should go talk to Sharif himself I think, and you and Cardozo can snoop about. Start at his house and check his file at the aliens department. He isn’t a Dutch citizen now, is he, Cardozo?”

“No, sir, he has an Egyptian passport. He told me when I was at his house. But he has had a resident’s permit for years and years.”

“We may have some information on him,” the commissaris said. “Good luck. Let me know if you find something. I may be at home but you have my number.”

Grijpstra arrived at Sharif Electric’s head office at the same time as the detectives of the commercial investigation department. There were two of them and the three policemen trooped into the Arab’s office.

Their host was graceful, and calm. He asked the policemen to sit down while he read the warrant. He telephoned his bookkeeper and gave permission to show the files. The bookkeeper came and asked the two detectives to follow him.

“Well, adjutant,” Sharif said pleasantly, “may I ask why this investigation is taking place?”

Grijpstra didn’t feel at ease. The calm face of the Arab, the thin well-cared-for beard, and the hands—long and slender—lying quietly on the desk, unnerved him.

He waited, trying to find the right words.

Sharif waited with him.

“Well, sir,” Grijpstra said at last, “there have been some irregularities recently. A lot of electric household goods have been stolen. Trucks have been hijacked, in Amsterdam and in the country, and in Belgium and West Germany as well. So far we haven’t been able to trace the goods but we now have reason to believe that there may be a connection with your organization. Some of these goods may be, or may have been, in your stores.”